There's One Big Issue That's Slowly Killing The Xbox One And PS4

When most people think of "next-generation" gaming graphics, they
envision crisper textures, added realism, detailed environments,
and a sharper resolution.

Resolution plays a huge role in the overall gameplay experience,
and it's fast becoming a low-hanging ceiling that effectively
limits the "next-generation" Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

Here's an example.

"Titanfall," the parkour shooter with large mechs thrown into the
mix, is arguably the biggest debut yet for Microsoft's Xbox One.
But did you know that when it debuted, there were regular old
Xbox 360 games running at a higher 1080p resolution? Keep in
mind, the Xbox 360 launched back in 2005 — some eight years
before the Xbox One.

"Titanfall" ran at only 792p when it shipped, which is a
significant drop compared to the 1080p HD quality most people are
accustomed to by now.

In an age where we're beginning to see a push for 4K "Ultra HD"
displays, which promise four times the resolution of 1080p HD
TVs, it's tough to call anything "next-generation" when it's
pumping out games at a lower resolution than the mobile games in
people's pockets.

It's not just the Xbox One that's hampered by too little
horsepower. While Sony's
PlayStation 4 does have beefier hardware, it's still running into
similar issues, just less frequently.

One of the biggest games at this year's gaming expo, E3, was the
medieval roleplaying game, "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt." The game
will be released in 2015, but even a full year and some change
after the Xbox One's release, the development team still can't
promise 1080p HD graphics.

"We will hit 900p no problem," executive producer John
Mamais said in an interview with Cinameblend. "We'd like
to get it up to 1080p on Xbox One. That's our goal. Whether we
can do it or not I don't know. We've got to squeeze everything we
can out of the hardware."

The graphics bottleneck stems from the graphics cards nestled
within the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The graphics card inside
the PlayStation 4 is more powerful than the graphics card inside
the Xbox One, but they're both vastly underpowered when compared
to even mid-grade gaming PCs of the last couple of years.

A lot of that has to do with cost; Sony and Microsoft have to
ship gaming consoles that people can afford, and people have
gotten used to spending around $400 for a gaming console.

But that creates a tradeoff for the PS4 and Xbox One.

It's a bit like a three-legged chair. If you forego one of the
three important gaming pillars (resolution, game detail, frame
rate), the remaining experience is far from what people have come
to expect in next-generation gaming.

Game developers are itching to cram more textures and polygons
into their games to up the level of detail, but the more detail
involved, the more taxing it is to output the game in a higher
resolution.

Electronic Arts

So if game developers want their games to have higher resolutions
and higher levels of details, they often do so at the expense of
the game's frame rate, or how smooth it is when you look around
the environment. Ever try a game with a lot of choppiness and
screen stuttering? That's what a low frame rate looks like. For
ideal smoothness, most people say the minimum required frame rate
is 60 frames per second (fps).

To combat these limitations, game developers, such as those
working on "The Witcher 3" and "Titanfall," have attempted to
compromise on all three aspects. They've lowered the resolution
on their games, compromised on the level of detail people can see
in their game environments, and chosen the below bare-minimum
frame rate of only 30fps ("The Witcher 3" team is targeting a PS4
experience of 1080p HD, but with only 30fps).

For many, these are small details an inexperienced eye can often
overlook.

But while the PS4 and Xbox One are both selling huge numbers, the
hardware's limitations will quickly become more apparent as the
level of detail in games outgrows the constraints of the game
consoles they're designed for.

Thankfully, game developers do have an ace up their sleeve:
optimization.

One of the nice things about selling millions of the same device,
all with the same hardware specifications, is that game
developers can devote the entirety of their time to tweaking and
squeezing every last ounce of horsepower from the machine.

Since developers know for certain that everyone will have the
same device, it allows for a more laser-focused optimization
process, compared to the wider scope of optimizing for PC users,
where everyone has a slightly different build.

Optimization is the only thing allowing game consoles to get away
with offering games at such a low resolution and frame rate, but
the problem is only going to get worse with
age. Chances are,
Microsoft and Sony will need to revisit their respective product
cycles, perhaps aiming for a new generation of game consoles
every five to seven years instead of 10. Otherwise, the games
we'll see might just be more of the same.